


Glasses

by lod



Category: Persona 4
Genre: Angst, Gen, Glasses, Growing Up, Sad Ending, no explicit relationship, who me using fanfic to write about my own life? neveeer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-18
Updated: 2019-05-18
Packaged: 2020-03-07 07:26:06
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18868534
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lod/pseuds/lod
Summary: A pair of glasses reminds Yosuke of another, and of a different time.(This was previously posted in Souyowrimo Prompts, but I'm breaking it up into each individual story. This one is one of my favorites and it's always annoyed me having it buried in there, anyway!)





	Glasses

Yosuke slid the glasses onto his face, looking at himself in the mirror. It felt odd, looking at his reflection, and for a moment he blamed the suddenly crisp outlines — he really should have started wearing them earlier — but his eyes adapted and the feeling remained, until it suddenly clicked in his mind. He huffed in amusement as he turned this way and that, checking different angles, but there was no denying it. Even though he hadn’t remotely had that thought in mind when he’d picked them out, he had ended up with a near-exact replica of the glasses Teddie had made him so many years ago. They were only missing the distinctive bands of color on the arms.

He wondered idly where those glasses were now; he hadn’t seen them in years. In a box at the back of his closet, he supposed. They didn’t serve any purpose now, hadn’t since that fateful spring day when they’d saved Inaba, and maybe the world. He shook his head, smiling a bit at how silly the thought seemed.

Nowadays he rarely thought about those times; they’d been crazy, and exciting, but they were so distant and he was starting to forget. What had been the name of Chie's overpowered attack near the end? What color had Ameno-Sagiri’s eye been? And he, himself, had changed so much since then. Could he even do the flip he used to do 10, 20, 50 times per outing as he summoned his Persona? He doubted it.

His thoughts drifted to the one boy who’d been at the center of it all back then, Yu Narukami. His erstwhile best friend. They’d kept in touch at first, chatting online everyday, sending photos and calling late into the night. But life had a strange way of moving forward, and with time daily exchanges had become weekly, then monthly. Now, almost ten years later, they mostly contacted each other on birthdays and christmases, with well wishes and life updates — aced my exams, met a girl, broke up with that girl, found a job, got that promotion I was telling you about last Christmas, think I might finally be able to buy an apartment…

On a whim, he snapped a picture of the glasses.

 **Yosuke**  
Remind you of something, Partner?

He put the phone down, and headed off to make breakfast and get ready for his workday, enjoying being able to read the subtitles on the TV from the kitchen, until his head started hurting. The optician had warned him that might happen, but it didn’t make it any better. He thought with a smile that it was a bit of the opposite of the TV world; there, they’d gotten headaches if they didn’t wear glasses, and here he was getting one because he did.

Fifteen minutes later, he was grabbing his phone to head out. The message he’d sent to Yu appeared when he unlocked it, still marked unseen. He smiled sadly as he slipped the phone into his pocket; he hadn’t expected an answer, but he remembered a time when they’d always answered each other within the minute, their friendship the most important thing to them. It wasn’t that it was wrong, the way things were now; people moved on, moved apart, and that was ok. Yosuke had new friends, had made and lost and remade friends many times in the decade since he’d graduated high school, and Yu probably had, too. It was ok, and it was normal, and it was heartbreakingly sad and for just a moment Yosuke felt his eyes burning behind the glasses.

Taking a deep breath, he swallowed the emotions he rarely allowed himself to dwell on and hurried out the door, mindful of the time. The twinge of nostalgia stayed with him all day, like background noise, a whisper of sadness just off the edge of consciousness, tinting everything in muted regret.

That was ok, too. That was one of the open secrets of adulthood that no one told you until you got there; everyone was a little bit sad all the time. It was normal.


End file.
